Blown badly out of proportion

Veteran pols know the power of "the children." They couch all manner of normally unacceptable government programs in terms of how "but it's for the children" to tug at people's heart strings.

So it is with the record 143 million pound ground beef recall of Hallmark Packing of Chino, California. Since Hallmark is the sixth largest ground beef supplier to USDA's school lunch program, this whole farce (see previous blog below) is tear jerkingly labeled as endangering the health of the nation's school children. This is patently false, as no tainted samples of hamburger have been found or alleged, not a single case of sickness has been found and attributed to the Hallmark meat. Using "the children" for cover, vegetarians, animal rights radicals and union activists are blowing up the Hallmark case all out of proportion.

It's bad enough that the video shot by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals might well have been staged, rather than shot as a picture of a daily practice at the plant. Now comes word of union trouble at the plant, disputes between labor and management.

Meatpacker unions are notorious for alleging unsafe meat handling practices, any time they need to claw for advantage and an upper hand with management. They put Cattle King clear out of business in Denver a few years ago with spurious charges. And that's far from the only packer driven out of business by union chicanery.

Iowa Sen. Tom Harkin of Iowa, chairman of the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee, is using the Hallmark case to justify a huge federal incursion into the livestock business, using it to justify a federally-mandated Animal Identification program that will be hugely expensive for both the taxpayers and individual farmers and ranchers, with very few results in return. Harkin is a favorite of Big Labor and its meatpacking unions.

The mass media, union members all, continue to trumpet the Hallmark case. Read those stories with a jaundiced eye, because what you see is not what you get. John Q. Public is being had.